Chapter 1- THE NIGHT RETURNS

CHAPTER ONE — THE NIGHT RETURNS

Liana Elizabeth Rose woke like a woman dragged out of the grave.

A choked gasp tore from her throat. Her back arched. Her nails clawed at the sheets. For a split second, she had no body just terror, cold metal, and the echo of her last breath inside a prison cell.

Then the world snapped back into place.

Silk sheets.

Warm air.

A bedroom unchanged by time.

Her chest rose and fell in vicious, uneven heaves. She stared at the chandelier overhead its crystals scattering soft light over a space she had not seen in years. A space she should never see again.

Because she died.

She remembered dying.

Her pulse stuttered. Her hand shook as she lifted it to her face. Smooth skin. No scars. No bruises. None of the ugly remnants of imprisonment or betrayal. It was the face she once carried like a curse—beautiful, delicate, too easy to shatter.

“This…” Her voice cracked. “This is five years ago.”

Her reflection in the wardrobe mirror confirmed the nightmare and the miracle.

Black hair cascading like silk.

Clear, bright eyes untouched by exhaustion.

A body unbroken.

She took one trembling step back.

Then another.

“No… heavens…” Her breath hitched. “I’ve… returned.”

The words tasted unreal, but the universe didn’t argue.

Memories slammed into her with brutal clarity.

Adrian’s accident.

Her frantic dash to the hospital.

Her ruined career.

Her months of caretaking.

His memory returning cold, sharp, cruel.

His accusations.

His betrayal.

The planted evidence.

The trial.

Her family abandoning her.

Her little brother slipping away.

Her death behind bars.

And above it all the most horrifying truth:

This world was a book.

A novel her roommate had introduced to her in her original life.

She’d woken in it once confused and helpless.

She died inside its script.

And now she had been thrown back to the start.

Fate had rewound itself.

The heavens had opened their eyes.

She exhaled, long and shaky.

“This time… no one will write my ending for me.”

A noise in the hallway made her flinch.

Her younger brother’s sleepy voice murmured through the crack of the door.

“Liana… are you awake?”

Her throat tightened.

He was still five. Still innocent.

Still within her reach.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Go back to sleep.”

When his footsteps faded, she faced herself in the mirror with a steadying breath.

She was no longer the naive Liana who loved Adrian with her whole foolish heart.

She wasn’t the obedient heroine the author wrote to be sacrificed.

She wasn’t the woman who would give up her career, her mind, her life for a man who would destroy her.

She was reborn.

She was aware.

And this time, she would not bow.

The clock read 11:42 p.m.

Her pulse surged.

Tonight is the night of Adrian’s accident.

The exact moment when fate first sank its claws into her.

When her life bent toward destruction.

In her first life, she ran to him.

Loved him.

Nursed him.

Devoted everything to him.

In return, he crushed her without blinking.

A cold smile touched Liana’s lips.

Not this time.

She walked to her dresser with deliberate calm, picking up her phone. She scrolled to the modeling agent whose life-changing offer she’d abandoned in her first life.

Her thumb hovered then pressed delete.

She wasn’t the kind of woman who waited for fate to cut her down anymore.

She would strike first.

She would rise first.

She would choose herself first.

She grabbed fitted black pants, a jacket, tied her hair back with a sharp snap of the band. Her heart was still racing, but her mind was ice-cold, razor-sharp.

This was the night everything had once gone wrong.

This was the night she would rewrite.

Liana stepped toward the door.

The air felt charged, as if the world itself were watching.

“Author,” she whispered into the silence, as if challenging the sky, the plot, the woven threads of fate itself.

“You wrote me to break once. Let’s see how you handle me now.”

And with a calm born only from death and return

Liana Elizabeth Rose walked out to take back her story.